1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a novel supporting structure for a container cargo mounted from its open side, to be used especially when the cargo is made up of bulk material to be contained inside a liner, i.e. a wrapping plastic material arranged inside the same container. The supporting structure of the liner is made up of multiple pre-tensioned belts coupled to an elastically deformable element arranged in the center and made up of a composite material.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
It is known in fact that for the transportation of bulk granulated materials inside a container it is indispensable to use the so called “liners” i.e. wrappings made of plastic material of great dimensions (nearly the size of a whole container) which have the function to contain the bulk material to be transported, similarly to a plastic bag of great dimensions.
It is also known that inserted through the open side of the container, a cargo supporting structure needs to guarantee structural resistance in the configuration inside of the cargo container in horizontal position and in the discharge configuration in which the container is lifted and inclined so that the bulk material is discharged from the open side of the container.
According to the state of the art, it is known that the above cited cargo supporting structures are usually made of a plurality of steel bars anchored to a stiffening wall equipped with suitable slots. The main disadvantage of this solution is in that said steel bars are intended to be disposable with the liner inside the container; in fact the production costs for the steel bars are substantial and are passed to the final customer, therefore it would be extremely advantageous to find an alternative way to avoid the increase in costs for the final customer.
It is also known the US patent application US2007267410 of Mino which discloses an outer stiffening system with belts applicable to a cargo to be transported inside a container. This system comprises a plurality of belts arranged in vertical (or horizontal) direction and spaced horizontally (or vertically) with respect to each other, the tension of each belt being adjustable independently. These belts are anchored by means of ring fasteners or by means of buckle fastening means and these fastening means are, in turn, coupled to another belt to be arranged inside the container at a prefixed distance from the open side of the same container.
This supporting system consists of too many parts and is complex and has many drawbacks. First of all, its applicability is strongly limited because of the complexity of the mounting procedure when the many belts to support the cargo need to be adjusted, and when each belt has to be tensioned to guarantee the perfect structural stability. This solution, requires an operator to manually intervene on many tensioning means which act on the belts, thus causing a huge waste of time by the personnel needed to complete the operation.